Observer > 2021 > January/February
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Volume 34, Issue1January/February 2021
A More Inclusive Psychological Science
Psychological scientists have long studied bias, from explicit and implicit attitudes to stereotypes and structural inequality. Now they’re working to apply those findings within the field itself.
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Published 6 times per year by the Association for Psychological Science, the Observer educates and informs on matters affecting the research, academic, and applied disciplines of psychology; promotes the scientific values of APS members; reports on issues of international interest to the psychological science community; and provides a vehicle for the dissemination on information about APS.

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    Broken Physics: A Conjunction-Fallacy Effect in Intuitive Physical Reasoning Dawoon Choi, Laura J. Batterink, Alexis K. Black, Ken A. Paller, and Janet F. Werker Psychological Science Individuals appear to be prone to the conjunction fallacy—rating a conjunction of specific events as more likely to occur than only one of the events, despite this being a logical impossibility—when reasoning about physics. Participants viewed videos of physical scenarios and judged the probabilities that single and combined events would occur. Regardless of the type of scenario or phrasing, participants rated the combined events as more likely than the single events. These findings indicate that intuitive physical reasoning can be affected by a fallacy thought to affect only other types of cognitive activities.

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